From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Nov 16 2002 - 10:45:29 MST
gts wrote
> > By what black art would our means to monitor the
> > subject's experience pick one of the two and not
> > the other? Would it flip a coin?
>
> I was merely trying to illustrate a point by speaking hypothetically.
> Forget "monitoring" if it causes confusion -- instead imagine yourself
> as the single Subject-0 who enters the chamber. You will experience
> yourself to leave by one exit, not two, and your exit will be distinct
> (labeled either "A" or "B"). Nothing remarkable about that to you, I
> hope.
I agree. Indeed, just as you say, "I will experience myself to
leave by one exit", it's just that this physical sequence of
events will occur in two places, not one. I will leave by
door B, but I will also leave by door A.
This is no more remarkable, actually, than saying I will travel
to Arizona and I will travel to Los Angeles. It's just that we
aren't used to two such sequences of events happening at the
same time.
> But you've also stated words to the effect that "what is true
> for one of them must also be true for the other [under level 7]"
> That statement is false if you accept my paragraph above.
Yes, you're right: One leaves by door A (not true of the other)
and one leaves by door B (not true of the other). Likewise as
in earlier examples where one of my duplicates is sitting near
the door and the other is not. What is being debated ultimately
is whether they are the same person, or as Jef would write, whether
we should "broaden our conception of identity [that is, what it
means to be a person] beyond the one evolution gave us, to accept
that we should consider our duplicates are in some sense ourselves".
> The two continuations will go on to live separate lives. Their
> experiences of life will be entirely different
They will not be *entirely* different. They will be quite similar,
just not identical.
> and their personalities will diverge. The life-experience of
> A will not be true for B, beginning from the very first moment
> of their mutual existence. What can be more important
> determinants of their identities than their personalities and
> experiences of life?
What can be more important is their memories and their basic
personality disposition. Suppose that gts is suddenly drafted
into the army, and you spend the next six weeks with no time
for thought, but undergoing the most rigorous physical and
psychological training. Would you survive? Absolutely! We
would find at the end of the six weeks that you were still
gts, and if they allowed you access to the internet in the
evenings, you'd still defend the same basically stubborn
positions. Anyone who doubted that you were gts would just
be wrong.
Now if the army life were to go on for enough years, so that
the new gts acquired different personality dispositions and
the old memories became vague and felt irrelevant, then after
a while you wouldn't be the same guy.
> I must say first of all that I resent (mildly) your implication that any
> level in your seven-item list is "higher" than any other level.
Yes, I'm sorry about that, but not very. Clearly "higher" most
logically means accepting a broader sense of identity. If one
goes still higher---as Hal and Wei Dai brought up---then one
starts to identify with people who are not as similar to one
as one's copies.
> The construction of your hierarchy appears to be designed to
> lead people to think level seven is a goal they should aspire
> to, as if level seven were the ultimate level of understanding
> that only an elite few have attained.
Anyone dumb enough to allow someone else to set their goals
can't participate in discussions like this at all, so don't
worry on that score. But yes, since people over time seem
to move up on the identity scale and not down, and because
people who have never thought about identity are at first
overwhelmingly likely to recoil from the thought of duplicates
as selves, then there is something to it being an elite level.
> > Yes, while today you expect to survive *sleeping*
> > tonight, you rightly expect the helicopter to have
> > a significant chance of killing you. You also, (I
> > think wrongly), fear that the 1000-way duplication
> > chamber will have a .999 chance of killing you.
> >
> > Is all of the foregoing correct? Thanks for your
> > patience, but we must avoid misunderstanding.
>
> Yes. Your chamber will kill 999 of my 1000 alternate continuations.
> These are not very good odds for me, given that I don't presume to
> have any control over which alternate universe I will experience.
We need to inquire further into your "demise" in this
chamber. Again, the setup: today we talk, tomorrow
you go to the chamber, and the third day someone wakes
up in your bed, and you believe that the odds are only
1 in 1000 that you will survive and will wake up on the
third day. Correct so far?
Inside the 1000-way duplication chamber exactly a thousand
gts-like creatures roam, but only one of them is you.
When the random choice is made, then if and only if that
particular one is chosen do you survive. Still correct?
Let us say that you are #731 so that if #333 or any other
number besides 731 is chosen, then you fail to survive
the duplication chamber exactly in the same manner as you
fail to survive the helicopter ride in 25% of the cases.
Okay so far?
Now what several of us are dying to know, so to speak, is
in what manner #731 is special? According to physics
there is nothing at all to distinguish #731 from #333
or any of the others. Oh sure, each one is in his own
temporary apartment, probably reading a different page
of the Army Basic Training Manual ;-) but I want to
know what is special about #731. Why is it here, today,
before you have even entered the duplication chamber
that one particular one of them (maybe not 731 but some
other number) is special? Just how is it that you fail
to survive unless one particular number is selected to
survive?
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:10 MST